The Renaissance, Bruegel and iconoclasm
Antwerp became the commercial centre of Europe, painters travelled to Rome, and Pieter Bruegel painted peasant life and the landscape.
In the first half of the 16th century Antwerp grew into the most important trading city in Europe. Spices came from Portugal, silver from southern Germany and cloth from England. The money attracted artists, and the city gained hundreds of painters, engravers and printers. At the same time Netherlandish painters began to travel to Italy. They came home with ancient gods, nude bodies and Italian architecture and tried to combine them with their own tradition. Antwerp became a meeting place for ideas, goods and people from all over the continent.
The artists who followed Italy are often called Romanists. Among them were Jan Gossaert, Jan van Scorel, Maarten van Heemskerck and Frans Floris. At the same time new kinds of subject matter developed. Joachim Patinir painted broad world landscapes, and Pieter Aertsen filled his pictures with meat, vegetables and market people. Out of this, landscape, still life and genre painting would eventually emerge as art forms in their own right. Many of these artists worked for an open market rather than for individual patrons.
The greatest artist of the period was Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He depicted peasants, seasons and proverbs with humour, sharpness and compassion. In his last years religious and political conflicts broke out. In 1566 Protestants stormed the churches and destroyed images. Two years later the revolt against Spain began, which would split the Low Countries in two. When Antwerp fell in 1585, thousands of artists and craftsmen fled north. With them, the centre of gravity of art also moved from south to north.